Getting Frustrated

Ok. I am new to Zimbra. I have spent 3 days getting nowhere so far. I think Zimbra will be a good system to use, but so far I am running into brick walls.
Most of it I am sure is me not understanding some things.
I started by installing Zimbra Network trial on FC5 when the sales rep said that all I had to do was talk to support to get that working. It did not work that way.
(By the way - it does not work)
I have Open Source installed now. The errors I get during install are MX record error (I am behind a NAT firewall) I don't seem to understand how to get around this error.
I also got a "Initializing Documents ... failed..." error.

I try to log into admin account from web interface and it says "username password incorrect".
I tried the zmprov commands given and get the error "zmprov is used for provisioning. Try: (list)"

Every zmprov command I try gives the same result.

We were ready to purchase the network edition of Zimbra but now I am having second thoughts. I want to give it a fair try so any help that I can get to overcome my own lack of understanding will be greatly appreciated.

First of all FC5 is not a supported platform for the Network Edition of Zimbra - there are no builds of NE for that O/S.

If you want to try the NE version then I'd suggest getting RHEL4 or SLES9, if you don't want to get a subscription to either of those then try CentOS 4. I would suggest going for the NE trial rather than the OSS version.

the problem you're having with the MX record can be easily resolved by installing a local DNS server and setting up your records on that. If the server is getting mail from the internet and you have a domain name hosted outside then you need a split-DNS setup. These topics have been covered many times in the forums and the wiki.

Let us know what you want to start with and post some details of the problems. Zimbra is really easy to set-up, believe me - I'm a numbskull when it comes to linux and I managed it.

Ok - getting somewhere I think.

I knew that it was not supported but Thought I would give it a try. It installs, but hangs quite badly - (doesn't work).

We will be getting RHEL4 soon but I will work with FC5 and OpenSource for now to get the basics of the installation and operation down.
Our final intends to be Network Edition on RHEL4.

As far as the DNS is concerned - I am a complete idiot when it comes to trying to configure DNS. Yes, I have DNS installed on the FC5 machine I am working with. That is probably my main problem right now.

I believe that I have it installed basically correctly - but I am still having some isseus with logging in and such.

You can get by with CentOS 4.4 and don't need RHEL 4 IMHO if you want to get started right away. Installed well out of the box for me once I realized that SELinux was required to be disabled and not just set to warn.

DNS is not reall that big of a deal. Ideally you should have someone there to set DNS up for you to test with. You can install it w/o dns just give the right answers when it asks. We setup an unused domain that we owned for internal use and enabled the A nad MX records for the host in that domain.

If you need to setup DNS then that will depend upon your DNS server and your experience with it. Luckily I did not have to deal with it other than to say "Make it work!!". Of course I had to tell him what to do

Success!

Thanks to the help from everyone here and great support from Zimbra support, I have Zimbra operational for the ost part. I have a few minor problems left but I don't think anything serious.
Thanks Phoenix and everyone here.